


Ten of Swords: Something to Give

by orphan_account



Category: Persona 3
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-07-26
Updated: 2008-07-26
Packaged: 2019-06-14 11:58:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,341
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15388278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: It can't get much worse than this. Ten years later, and it feels like nothing has changed.Older!Ken/Shinji, past Shinji/Aki





	Ten of Swords: Something to Give

He opened the door to a young man he didn't recognize. He looked to be in his early twenties, clean-shaven, wearing a pair of innocuous glasses, his clothing inexpensive but ordered and clean. His shirt was tucked in, even. He had a messenger bag slung over one shoulder – probably full of books, he was a dead ringer for a student – maybe even a grad student, with that kind of serious, academically-focused look.

“Do I know you?” He wasn't used to visits from strangers, or visits from anyone other than the landlord demanding rent, really (and this didn't look like the landlord's kid). He wasn't in the mood to entertain guests.

The maybe-student looked a bit surprised to see his would-be host's scowling, stubbled face before he took a moment to gather himself and make his reply. “This is room one-ten, correct?”

The other man leaned against the door frame as he eyed the intruder, not even bothering to keep the sarcasm out of his tone. “Great. You read the number on the door. Now what do you want?”

“You're... Aragaki-san.” He guy looked a bit nervous.

“Yeah. And?” This was getting tiresome, and fast. Shinjiro wasn't talkative at the best of times, and this guy was starting to piss him off. Get out with it, already.

The guy fiddled with the strap on his messenger bag. “You don't remember me at all, Aragaki-san?” He frowned, thoughtful, looking at the ground. “I suppose it's been a long time since we've seen each other. I'm most likely... taller than you remember.”

Shinjiro looked at the guy again, really looked at him, squinting at his face and trying to figure out what game he was trying to play. Shinjiro didn't have many old friends – or any friends at all, actually, a few acquaintances, faces he knew –

Shinjiro froze. “Shit.” Swallowed. “Uh.” He pushed off the door frame, backing into his apartment, eyes to the side and on the ground as he pulled open the door. It had been – fuck, it had to have been ten years since he'd last seen Ken Amada.

Ken stepped in, closing the door behind him, as Shinjiro retreated into his one-room home. The place was a mess – or would be if he had had enough shit to even make a mess – mostly it was just bare and old and a dive. It wasn't like Shinjiro gave a shit anyway, and the place was cheap, so why complain?

Ken looked around the room – there was kind of a kitchen thing on one side with a mini-fridge, a sink and a hotplate with a small low table to sit at on the floor – on the far side an old western-style mattress with a ratty blanket and a dirty-looking sheet was tucked in the corner. Mould crawled up the walls and there was a dented empty pot on the floor, a suspicious-looking streak and blob crawling over the ceiling above it. The entire place smelled of cigarettes.

Ken looked more uncomfortable than Shinjiro was, seeing Shinjiro's place – Ken was probably used to nice university dorms, cramped, but tidy and clean and reeking of youth and ambition and the middle class. It wasn't like Shinjiro gave a rat's ass what Ken or anybody thought about how he lived.

Neither of them said anything, but Shinjiro put a kettle on the hotplate anyway, figuring that making tea was fulfilling some kind of hostly etiquette. Not like Shinjiro would make tea for anyone else – but shit, he'd killed the kid's god damned mom, the least he could do was make some fucking tea.

Ken took his shoes off and set them neatly against the wall before taking a seat at the table, sitting politely on his knees and looking awkward and out of place. The next few minutes were silent, the loudest thing in the room the whistling of the kettle as it started to boil. Shinjiro's back was to Ken as he got out the cups and the tea pot, forcing Ken to split most of his attention between Shinjiro's back (he was wearing a long jacket, something like his old one, perhaps – no wonder he kept it on, this place was freezing, did he even have a space heater?) and the pitted surface of the table. There was an old chipped mug in the middle that had been converted into an ashtray full of half brand name and half hand-rolled cigarette butts.

Eventually the tea got poured and Shinjiro set a mug in front of Ken, taking a mug for himself and sitting cross-legged across from the younger man. Shinjiro didn't offer any cream or sugar, and Ken didn't ask for any.

Ken was the one to break the silence, cutting past his hesitation and straight to the reason he had come here in the first place. “I forgive you,” he said.

Shinjiro didn't say anything to that at first, looking down at his mug. “Is that why you came here?” He said, finally.

“It's part of it,” Ken replied. “I thought it was important for me to tell you that.”

Shinjiro leaned into the wall on his right, mug in hand, steadily avoiding eye contact. “Is that all?”

Ken wilted a bit at Shinjiro's reply, but continued anyway. “No. I'm –  all of us – we've been worried about you. You left without a word, without leaving us any way to contact you or know of your whereabouts –”

“I wonder why that was,” Shinjiro said before downing a harsh gulp of bitter tea.

If Shinjiro had been looking at Ken's face, he would have seen the hurt there. (That was exactly why he wasn't looking.) “I know you're not inclined to believe this,” Ken said, voice tight, “but we care about you. The only reason I was able to find you here at all was because of Mitsuru's –”

“Fuck her,” Shinjiro spat. Why had he even let the damn kid in; he'd known it would come to something like this.

“Listen to me!” Ken cut in, firm, his tone commanding Shinjiro to look at him, setting his hands down on the table as he leaned towards Shinjiro. “I know you don't like to be treated with kindness,” he lowered his voice. “We tried. We tried to be sympathetic, to be caring, but you don't want that, do you. You want someone to berate you, to fight you, to get angry at you like Sanada-san d–”

The sound of a ceramic mug smashing against the floor interrupted Ken. Shinjiro was still sitting, mug shards and hot tea decorating the floor in front of him as he looked steadily at the wall away from Ken. “Don't fucking bring him into this.”

“How can I not?!” Ken's hands began to curl into fists on the table, his shoulders tensing as he spoke. “This is all because of –”

“Shut up!”

“Because of his death!” Ken's face was pale, strained, but there was a determined set to his lips.

Shinjiro fell into silence again, and Ken relaxed a hair. “It wasn't your fault,” Ken said.

Shinjiro remembered the gunshots, remembered feeling Aki's blood draining. Remembered something quiet and rasped on Aki's lips that Shinjiro couldn't decipher, something that could have been 'love' or could have been the much more terrifying 'live'. Shinjiro didn't remember killing Takaya, though the body was evidence enough that he'd done it.

It wasn't like he was capable of forgetting any of this.

Shinjiro reached into his jacket, fumbled for a cigarette. He felt guilty every time he smoked one (Aki had probably told him to live, that would be just the kind of shit Aki would say), but he needed something to replace the pills (to replace Aki), and tobacco was only a slow death anyway. Everyone was dying slowly, when you thought about it.

The cigarette didn't make him feel better, but it gave him something to do while he tried to come up with an excuse not to respond. Strike a match, light the stick, inhale, exhale, don't look anywhere the fuck near Ken.

The tension drained from Ken's body and he sighed, looking down at the table again before back at Shinjiro, swallowing. “Can I...?” His hand reached out a bit, motioning to Shinjiro's cigarette.

Shinjiro took his cigarette out of his mouth, looking at it, gesturing with it. “What, you want a drag?”

“Please.”

Shinjiro snorted and handed Ken the cigarette. “You, smoking?”

But Ken inhaled with a practiced ease, calming a little like all addicts did when they got their fix. “Don't look so surprised.” He said after blowing a cloud of smoke politely away from Shinjiro's face, handing the cigarette back to the older man.

Shinjiro shrugged. “You just always seemed so...young. Clean.” Whatever that was supposed to mean.

“I'm trying to quit, for your information,” Ken scowled. “...and I don't remember ever feeling young.”

Shinjiro held the cigarette in his hand, watching it burn. Yeah. That was his fault, all right.

The tea from the smashed mug was quickly cooling on the floor, but both of them ignored it.

“So, you never got it back...?” Ken asked.

Shinjiro shook his head. “No. He doesn't come anymore.” He pressed his cigarette to his lips, inhaling, exhaling. “I can't feel him at all.” A barked laugh. “Good fucking riddance.”

Shinjiro had stopped taking the pills after Aki's death – he could at least do that much for Aki, do what Aki had wanted for him.

Of course his Persona hadn't taken to that (and yeah, this was his fault too, not being able to control it, wanting to die. He wasn't strong like Aki, couldn't let things go), wrappings its fingers around his neck and choking, choking –

But Nemesis had been there, prying the fingers away, cutting, slicing, fighting – and Ken had been there too, behind it, Evoker in his shaking hand.

Shinjiro hadn't been aware for most of it, but when he woke, he could no longer feel his Persona. Had it been killed? Could you kill it? Why was Shinjiro still alive, then?

Whatever the reason, it was gone. And Shinjiro'd had no reason to stick around.

Ken breathed a sigh of what was most likely relief. “Yeah.”

There was another spread of silence, this one a bit more comfortable than the last. Shinjiro finished his cigarette, grinding it into the mug in the center of the table before saying anything, awkward, but not knowing what else to do. “So... how's everyone?”

Ken fiddled with his mug. He hadn't drunk any of it yet, and it was growing cold. “Mitsuru's running her father's company – he died shortly after you left – he was killed, actually. But she's doing okay. Yukari and Junpei got married, can you believe that?” he laughed. “Fuuka's working for Mitsuru, actually, doing some programming work, she seems really happy right now...” Ken was calling them all by their first names, now. They seemed to have gotten closer. “Minato died,” Ken said finally. “At the end of everything.”

Shinjiro tried to hide his shock. That kid, dead? He'd been fucking invincible. No fucking way he'd kicked it, not against any monster. “Playing the martyr, huh.”

Ken looked sad. “He saved us.”

“I bet.” Shinjiro paused. “...what about... Koro-chan?” He almost muttered it, feeling strange and lame asking after a dog immediately after hearing that someone had died.

Ken fidgeted. “He was... an old dog.”

Well. Shinjiro shouldn't have been surprised. But he found himself believing it more than he could Minato's death. Dogs didn't live forever, right?

...Shit. He hadn't been expecting it to hurt this much.

A fucking  _dog_ , man, it was just a dog. But Shinjiro's throat started to close up anyway, and fuck, this was so stupid, he was crying. 

Ken looked up, peering at Shinjiro's face from across the table. “Are you... crying?”

“No.” Well, that was one pathetic lie. Shinjiro couldn't even get it out in an even voice, wiping off his traitorous eyes with the sleeve of his jacket.

“It's... okay. I know you loved him.”

“Shut up.” Hell, he was gone now, tears streaming down his cheeks, but he kept rubbing his face off anyway – like it would make a difference. Shinjiro was being so fucking stupid, a total jackass, really, over a damn dog. A functioning human being would expressing remorse over Minato right now. Why couldn't he do at least that right?

Ken came around the table, carefully avoiding the mess of tea on the floor to move to Shinjiro's side. He pushed aside the table with one hand, seating himself against the wall next to Shinjiro, not touching him, just sitting there.

“He loved you, too, you know.” And Shinjiro wasn't sure if Ken was talking about Koromaru anymore. But yeah. Shinjiro had known that. He'd been a fucking idiot about it, but he'd known it.

“I told you there was another reason I came here,” Ken said. Shinjiro looked at Ken out of the corners of his eyes. “I wanted to apologize.”

“Why?” The tears had stopped, but his voice was still rough.

“For –” Ken looked down at his hands. “I knew you were hurting, that you regretted it, probably hadn't even meant to in the first place – but I kept hating you anyway, because it was easy. Because it distracted me from my own pain.”

“So what?” Shinjiro said. “It's not like I don't deserve it.” There was no bitterness in his tone. It was a fact.

Ken got to his feet suddenly, planting himself in front of where Shinjiro was sitting, looking down with an intense expression on his face. “Get up.”

Shinjiro looked up, his determination to hide his tear-blotched face lost in his surprise and confusion.

When he didn't get a reply, Ken grabbed Shinjiro by the collar, pulling him to his feet. Shinjiro was too surprised to react (he wasn't a kid anymore, had to stop thinking of him like a tiny elementary schooler), didn't pry Ken's fingers from his collar. This felt like something that Aki would do, almost – but not really; Ken was too different, too focused, too calm. Aki would have punched him on coming through the door, crying his frustration and his anger and his love for someone he should have just fucking  _dropped_ already (Shinjiro didn't deserve that kind of devotion).

“You know what you do deserve?” Ken said, leaning in close, his voice almost trembling. “You deserve everything you've done to yourself. You deserve everything you've wasted. You deserve everything he gave to you.”

Shinjiro felt weak, weaker than he usually did from eating little and sleeping less, cigarettes and coffee and hurt replacing his need for everything else (but he still missed the pills, still wanted them, wanted the knowledge of death that they brought). It was the truth. And Aki had only ever given him good things.

Shinjiro looked up at Ken, really looked at his face for the first time since the younger man had walked into his apartment. It was amazing, really, what the kid had turned himself into. How he'd gotten past everything on his own. He was strong. Shinjiro had always leaned on strong people (or one person, really, without him, Shinjiro'd had no choice but to fall), even when he hated to admit it (would never admit it, admit his weakness).

So this was it, an impasse. Ken wouldn't back down, and Shinjiro – he couldn't do anything, really, fuck, he was so tired. He was out of venom, out of anger, out of options. Out of ten years of his life (life, was it? And he was almost thirty now. Wasn't he supposed to be living, by this point?)

“We missed you,” Ken said, hands fisting in Shinjiro's collar. He sounded rattled. Maybe he was the one being held up, now, using Shinjiro as a support.

“I'm sorry.”

“I missed you.”

“Sorry.”

And then Ken did the not-so-smart thing, the unplanned thing, the thing he hadn't gone over fifty times last night (not like their conversation had gone the way he'd planned, really, but now it was really diverging from the expected outcome). He leaned forward and kissed Shinjiro, hands still grasping the collar of Shinjiro's jacket as if Shinjiro could get away somehow, as if his back weren't already to the wall.

He'd never been young, but now he was older, part asking, part demanding that Shinjiro respond, move his lips in return, give him anything at all.

Shinjiro's eyes were wide, his mouth slack. Ken pulled away, letting his hands drop from Shinjiro's collar. “I'm sorry,” he said, stepping back.

“That's what I said,” Shinjiro replied, wiping his mouth with his sleeve. Fuck. Shit. Well... fuck.

“That was stupid of me.” Ken fiddled with the cuffs of his shirt. “I shouldn't have... complicated things. I wasn't thinking clearly. I mean, when I was a kid, I was always –” he shook his head to cut off his own babbling before looking back at Shinjiro. “I couldn't forget you. I can't forget you. I'm sorry.”

Shinjiro was needy. He was needy as fuck, he knew it, and Ken was offering something, something that could fill a part of him, at least for a little while.

He wanted it so bad.

Shinjiro stepped forward and took Ken by the shoulders, kissing him hard, rough, the only way he knew how. Yeah, he was probably being a jackass,  _was_ being a jackass, using a kid with a held-over senpai crush (you don't hold that shit for ten years, don't come looking for a guy over just that, but he ignored that thought) because he was lonely and hadn't had anything but the wall for support and his own hand for comfort for more years than he knew how to handle.

In his head he apologized to Aki and to Ken as Ken undressed him (slow, careful, not fumbling and cursing the buttons like Aki always had), hands running over Shinjiro's thin torso, feeling him carefully, memorizing him. Shinjiro felt uncomfortable naked, no jacket or anything to cover him (but Ken didn't make judgments, didn't gasp or berate Shinjiro and tell him to eat more, just covered his body with hands and lips and gentleness) as Ken pulled him to the old mattress, tugging Shinjiro on top of him, guiding Shinjiro's hands to buttons and through belt loops and down zippers.

Ken was slow, methodical, doing everything precisely, changing a grip or a stroke or a movement hair by hair until he got it right and Shinjiro was hard and panting in his hands. Shinjiro came with Ken inside of him, Ken's hand stroking him as Shinjiro leaned in towards the younger man, still moving his hips until Ken joined him with a soft cry (he'd never thought he'd hear something like that coming out of Ken's mouth, never thought any of this would have happened).

They lay together for a while, Ken curled into him, his head on Shinjiro's shoulder and his arm curling over Shinjiro's stomach. “Thank you,” was all he said before getting up to wash himself off at the sink.

Shinjiro watched Ken, the man quite unmoved and unembarrassed at his own nudity as he cleaned up and got dressed. Ten years had made a tough kid into something more, and only one evening had left Shinjiro feeling like he'd been hit in the head, speechless, more than a little amazed at the thing that had snuck up on him.

Shinjiro didn't understand why Ken had thanked him (really, if it was just sex he wanted, the kid – or not-kid – could go after anyone he wanted; he didn't have to resort to someone like Shinjiro), but it left him with something inside him even after the physical presence was gone, and after Ken had left.

Shinjiro didn't know what he had done. But even in his rotting apartment, his neglected body and his broken spirit, it seemed he had something of value, something he had been given, and something to give.

He wouldn't waste it.

 


End file.
